“I’ve been writing stories, basically, for as long as I can remember,” junior Kate Scheer said. “The first time I really remember, I was probably six or seven, I was at a camp, and we had some downtime. I started writing stories.”
Scheer and other students have been taking part in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, an activity where people try to write a 50,000 word draft of a novel in one month, generally November.
Freshman Hammond Sherouse, participating for the second year, is one of the East Chapel Hill students doing NaNoWriMo. He described his novel as “about a fringe activist group who hates the mail, the Postal Service, going up against the Illuminati-style spirits that are in charge of the government.”
“It’s a Western set in the late 1860s,” Scheer said. “And then what happens is one night, [the ranch] is putting the cattle to sleep, this person just randomly shows up…. This rider comes in and gets shot off their horse and the posse comes chasing in.”
Freshman Andrew Sadowsky, also in his second NaNoWriMo, was not confident in describing his novel, but he said “there’s a lot of political turmoil” in the setting of the novel.
NaNoWriMo was started by Chris Baty in 1999, with just him and a small group of other writers. NaNoWriMo has now expanded to 367,913 novels written and registered in all NaNoWriMos before
2019, according to their website. It has spawned some successfully published novels, and there are even NaNoWriMo-inspired spinoffs, such as genre-based novel writing months and more casual versions.
“So the first time I did NaNo, I found it during the summer,” said Scheer, who has done NaNoWriM twice and NaNoWriMo-style events in other months twice. “I was just watching stuff, I was looking at writing tips on YouTube and a video about it came up…. I did their July camp, just a really toned down
version.”
The Writers’ Group at East has had people write their NaNoWriMo stories at their normal meetings, where students gather to write and discuss what they are writing with their peers. The group was founded last year by Scheer and Ragini Reed.
“Teaching people creative writing is a really worthwhile thing to do,” Scheer said. “It gives them a voice, which is really important to society today.” While Scheer, Sherouse and Sadowsky all participate n Writers’ Group, there are other ways NaNoWriMo authors find community.
Sadowsky said, “I’m in the Chapel Hill NaNoWriMo group as well as the group that is in the [Chapel Hill Public] Library.”
Sherouse didn’t do any groups last year or this year, and he says “Last year, it went pretty well…. I met my word goal, which was 50,000 words, and it was a pretty valuable experience.”
Scheer said that people are supposed to start NaNoWriMos with none of their story written, but she decided to continue a draft that she had started before NaNoWriMo had begun.
“I have another document, which is currently 11 pages in Google Drive,” Scheer said, “and it is a long rambling summary of what I want the book to be, research stuff, and then a chapter by chapter breakdown of what I want to happen each chapter. “The one thing you have to be aware of is what you’re going to get,” Scheer said. “It’s a first draft, it’s not going to
be good, but it’s going to be finished.
Sherouse said “I just think [NaNoWriMo] is a really powerful experience, and that, if you have the time, and you have the inspiration, you should definitely do it.”
